


Girl On A Ledge: Mel's Story

by ThaliaGrace318



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e04 Many Happy Returns, Finding herself, Forgotten character, Personal Growth, Sole Survivor, Survival, Surviving Against The Odds, Survivor Guilt, The 100 S2E04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 06:30:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15067193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaGrace318/pseuds/ThaliaGrace318
Summary: "I'm not strong... Stubborn maybe." Mel fell to Earth, the sole survivor of Factory Station. Her home, her parents, her friends all ripped away. Beaten, but not broken, clinging to survival. Will the girl on a ledge find her way in the new world?





	Girl On A Ledge: Mel's Story

**Author's Note:**

> I really hated how The 100 writers would introduce a character only for them to die right away or never be seen or mentioned again. Mel is the sole survivor of Factory Station; an entire episode was dedicated to saving her; one of the original members of The 100 died trying to save her. And then we never saw her again! So this is a tribute to a character who may have more of a part to play.
> 
> Please comment and let me know what you think, if you would like to see more of this character and how she adjusts to life on the ground and dealing with her own trauma.

**Chapter 1**

_“In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again.”_

Chancellor Jaha’s words echoed throughout the hold in Factory Station where people sat huddled together and strapped in by whatever improvised seat belt or harness they could use, waiting for the detonation that would launch the Ark out of orbit and send it hurtling towards the ground. In the huddle, Mel sat next to her mother who squeezed her hand in reassurance as they all repeated the final line of the Traveler’s Blessing.

“May we meet again,” Mel said along with her mother and everyone else while they all silently prayed that this would not truly be their final journey to the ground. Then they waited.

The sound of the detonation was distant, but still oppressive against her ears as the Ark was separated from the Earth Monitoring ring and began its descent. Mel tried to focus on her mother’s hand in hers, gripping it tightly. Her mother showed no sign of loosening her hold, even when the station began shaking and dipping on its violent trajectory towards Earth. They could feel the shock vibrations of the Ark braking apart back into the original twelve Stations that had come together nearly a hundred odd years ago to form humanity's sanctuary in the sky. The Station rattled loudly and jerked side to side. People pressed against her from all sides, and Mel felt her harness digging into her ribs as her body followed the ship’s movements.

A violent jolt threw Mel back against her mother’s side as the ship lurched sideways, then tilted almost forty five degrees before righting itself with a stomach turning swoop. A child’s wail cut through the collective gasp. Several people shrieked as the metal frame of the ship began to buckle as if it were a tin can being crushed by a giant fist. A high-pitched mechanical whine screeched through the hold, threatening to burst their eardrums, drowning out the cries and terrified sobs.

Mel clutched her mother’s arm as terror surged through her. It had been hard enough watching her home fall apart as the Ark ran out of oxygen. Now Factory Station was being torn apart around her. Part of the roof was missing! And through it, Mel caught a glimpse of sky – real sky, not the unchanging sea of stars that they saw from space. Shards of hot glass and metal sprayed throughout the cabin and flames shot up seemingly out of nowhere – the people closest to them tried to duck and move away but there was nowhere to go. The tang of scorched metal burned Mel’s nose, while the scent of something else made her gag…With rising fear, Mel realized that it was the smell of burning flesh.

Pushing hard against the force of the ship’s velocity, she turned to look at her mother. For a moment, Mel couldn’t hear the sounds of whimpering and crying or the crunch of metal. She could only see her mother’s face, her wide brown eyes staring aback at her like she was the only thing that mattered. Mel was brought back to awareness of the chaos around them by the sound of metal ripping from metal. It vibrated through her eardrums, and down into her jaw, through her bones and into her gut. She ground her teeth together. She watched in helpless horror as the roof peeled off completely and flew away as if it were nothing more than a scrap of fabric.

She forced herself to turn back to her mother who’d closed her eyes now but was gripping her hand with renewed intensity. “I love you.” Mel could see the words her mother was saying, though the sound was swallowed up by the screams all around them. Suddenly, with a bone shaking crash, the Station slammed into something. Mel felt every bone in her body being painfully jarred, and the hand she was clutching was ripped away from her. Mel screamed for her mother as she felt herself being thrown through the air.

And then everything went black.

* * *

 

When Mel came too, it took her a few minutes to realize that she was really awake. It was so dark. And everything hurt. She didn't know where she was, where her mother was, where anything was... She only knew that it was dark...and cold...And she couldn't move. Panic started to seize her chest as she realized that she couldn't even lift a finger; it was like her body was paralyzed.

Was she injured? How bad was it? She was afraid to find out.

Mel wanted to cry out for her mother – for her mother to put her arms around her and say everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t, because that’s what mothers did. Where was her mom? Was she here, was she okay?

 _Get up. Find mom. Get up._ Mel repeated those words in her head over and over but it didn’t do any good. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even make a sound.

What was wrong with her?

Thankfully, mercifully, the abyss of unconsciousness pulled her back down before the panic could strangle her.

* * *

A few moments passed. Or was it a few hours?

This time when she woke, Mel was slightly more aware. Her body hurt. Even breathing hurt. And she was still alone, she knew that much. Her mother hadn’t come and found her.

Where was her mom? If she was alright, then she would have come and found her.

Distantly, Mel could hear a low, pitiful moaning; a sound full of more anguish than anything she’d ever heard. It took her a while to realize that she was the one making that sound. She tried to open her eyes, to lift her head, but the slightest effort sent her head into a sickening spin. She gave up and allowed herself to sink back into the darkness.

At this point, it was welcome.

* * *

The next time Mel woke, she struggled against the comforting quiet of the darkness that wanted to pull her down, back into its grasp. She fought her way towards consciousness, afraid that if she didn’t wake up now, she probably never would.

She cracked her eyes open, and then quickly squeezed them shut as pale dawn light assaulted her. After so long in the dark, this light as dim as it was stabbed painfully at her eyes. She waited a few moments and then tried again, squinting to see where she was.

For a few, groggy seconds she had no idea where she was, what she was looking at. Then her breath froze in her chest as it clicked in her mind that she was staring straight down at a sheer hundred foot drop. A scream caught in her throat nearly choking her as she stared in open mouthed horror; as she lifted her head and tried to see something else, _anything else_.

Trying to turn around to see better, Mel felt something poking into her from all sides. And she felt her body slip as her movements loosened the hold of whatever had her. She froze, every muscle clenched, and her hand grabbed onto something in front of her face. Something brown and green.

A tree – it was a tree, she was in a tree.

With her heart pounding in her chest, Mel carefully looked around and confirmed that she was indeed caught in a tree. A thin scraggly tree that itself was clinging precariously to life where it grew out of the side of a vertical cliff wall.

She must have been thrown here when Factory Station hit the ground.

Mel steeled herself and then looked down again. There it was – Factory Station, barely recognizable. The part of Factory Station that had stayed intact was now a smoking wreck in a deep crater with other pieces of the Station scattered around the side of a mountain; hunks of twisted broken metal, some of them on fire.

Broken metal…and broken bodies. Mel could see them, hundreds of them, strewn around all over the ground below.

It was a miracle that she’d survived.

And she almost wished that she hadn’t.

There was no one else around, no way up or down the sheer rock wall. She would die here, slowly, from starvation or thirst or exposure. Mel shook her head in denial, though she wasn’t sure what she was denying – her own survival, her own death, everyone else’s…

Her mom… Now Mel knew why her mom hadn’t come looking for her (apart from the fact that there was no way anyone could reach her here). Her mother was one of the broken bodies down there. Fear and desperation bubbled up inside Mel, and she finally found her voice.

“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! PLEASE HELP ME!”

Somebody had to be there...on the cliff above or the ground below…Somebody had to help her. But only the echo of her own voice answered her.

Mel screamed and shouted for as long as she could until her voice went hoarse and her throat was sore. When she couldn’t shout anymore, she cried. Tears ran freely down her face, while her sobs shook her entire body and she clung more tightly to her tree.

This wasn’t what Earth was supposed to be like. This wasn’t worth dying for. And she wanted her mom. Mel clung to the little tree that had saved her life and cried, the heart wrenching sobs of a lost child giving into despair.

No one was around to hear her.

* * *

 

The screaming started later in the day.

At first Mel thought it was in her own head, that she was dreaming or imagining it. But it didn’t go away and she realized that it really was someone screaming. Another survivor! Someone was alive out there.

Mel’s tears had run dry and her face felt sticky with the grit that had dried in the tracks of her tears. She wanted to shout, to call back to them that she was there, that she was still alive too, but her throat was raw from her own earlier screaming, too dry to work up a shout.

And what good would it do anyway? She couldn’t help anyone. And no one could help her. She’d hoped and prayed that someone else had survived, but now she just wanted them to go away. Their screams only showed her how helpless she was to do anything. Mel let the hopelessness of her situation numb her to the agonized cries from the other survivor.

* * *

The silence was worse than the screaming. It meant that she was once again alone.

If Mel had thought that she was all cried out, she proved herself wrong. Though the other survivor had at last gone silent, his screams still echoed in her ears. Tears once again flowed freely from her eyes. She lay cradled in her tree, keeping as still as possible with her eyes closed so that she wouldn’t have to look at the long drop beneath her or the steep cliff above, both of which made her dizzy and sick.

The heat wasn’t helping either. She’d been in the shade of the mountain for the first half of the day, but as the sun reached its peak and then began its decent, its harsh rays began to bake the rock wall that she was trapped against.

Mel tried to shift away, so that she was not pressed right up against it, and as she did, there was a sudden snap as a branch broke out from under her.

She screamed as she felt herself fall.

And screamed again as she caught herself before she fell off the cliff face entirely.

Mel clung to a branch of the tree that swayed alarmingly with her weight, wrapping both of her arms around it. The toe of her boot just barely managed to find a grip on the ledge just beneath the tree.

She sobbed, knowing that she was going to die soon.

* * *

Alright, no more crying.

Mel sucked in several long breaths as she mustered up whatever courage she had. She wasn’t dead yet. She’d lost everything – her mother, her friends, her home – but not her life. Not yet. And as she found herself alone, facing certain death without hope of rescue, she knew one fact with stark clarity: She did not want to die. Her mother would not want her to die.

So she wouldn’t.

So she would not give up, not without a fight. Even if the only fight she could give was to hold on with both hands for as long as possible. Even if holding on was futile. She wouldn’t give up. She would hold on.

Mel made sure she had a more secure perch on the thin ledge beneath the tree, and very, very carefully she peeled her jacket off, first one sleeve, then the other, keeping an arm looped around the branch of the tree the whole time. It took long minutes to accomplish this, her battered and bruised body aching and complaining the whole time. She whimpered as loose rocks clattered down the cliff side, knowing that one slip would send her tumbling down as well. But finally Mel had the jacket free. Wrapping it around her waist, she tied the sleeves off to the trunk of the tree, creating a harness or sorts. It made her feel a little bit more secure. Not a lot…but it was the best she could do.

* * *

Rain.

It was raining. Water was falling from the sky, precious life giving rain.

Mel roused herself and raised her head from where it had been resting in the crock of her arm; she lifted her face towards the sweet moisture. The hot sun beating down on her all day had left her with her head aching and feeling sick to her stomach; it seemed very possible that she would die of heatstroke. Now Mel let out an almost hysterical laugh as the life giving liquid fell from the sky into her open mouth. It was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted. She licked her dried, cracked lips trying to get every drop that she could reach.

She wasn’t dead. Not yet.

The daylight faded. The heat seeped out of the rock, and now she had the cold to contend with. But she wasn’t dead.

Not yet…

* * *

Mel tried to think about how much time had passed.

She’d survived the crash.

She’d survived the blistering hot day.

She’d survived the bitter cold night.

And now it was morning again…

Her skin felt hot and sensitive to the touch, baked by yesterday’s sun. The pangs of hunger had passed and given way to a hollow emptiness. She managed to drink some of the rain water that had gotten caught in the rocks; it kept her thirst a bay…for a while anyway. She tried not to drink all of it at once. The shade of the mountain would protect her through the morning, but in the afternoon the sun would be on her again. She should save the little bit of water she had for then.

* * *

Mel’s throat ached for water, for any moisture, just a few drops. There was none left that she could reach. What she didn’t drink was already evaporated as the rock wall once again heated up when it was hit by the sun.

Mel looked down at the ground far beneath her. How bad would it be to fall to her death? Would she feel it? Would it hurt? It would hurt less and be a lot quicker than slowly dying of dehydration.

Mel didn’t want to die…but even more, she didn’t want to die slowly either. She’d wanted to be strong, to survive, for her mom if not for herself. But how long would surviving last when it could only end one way? Maybe there was strength in knowing when to let go. There was nothing left for her to hold onto anyway.

 _I’m sorry mom_ , Mel thought as she slowly inched her arms from where they were locked around her tree. She closed her eyes. _May we meet again_.

Mel’s eyes snapped open at the clatter above her. What was that? She listened hard, not yet daring to hope. But there it was again! Those were voices, up on the cliff. Those were people! There were people on the ledge above her!

She wasn’t dead yet...

 


End file.
